Team Gallery

Chief Financial Officer — Mark is McGee Media's Chief Financial Officer. Mark has a BA from Cornell University in Government. He started his career as a credit analyst at Citibank in the early 90's. He Left Citi after 4 years to pursue an MBA at Boston College and was nominated for one of BC's Executive Fellowships as an analyst for State Street Global Advisors the summer between his first and second year. Upon graduating BC, Mark moved to Westchester, New York to be a financial analyst in IBM's Services division. While at IBM, Mark worked in various capacities; as the finance manager on a number of IBM's largest Services contracts; as a pricer on several of IBM's Services deals; and as a member of the management team consolidating IBM's North America financial measurements. Mark is also a CFA Charterholder. In his spare time, Mark is a backyard musician as well as chicken and apple farmer.

Supervising Producer — Deb is a documentary filmmaker at McGee Media with over 20 years of experience. Most recently she worked with Dyllan McGee as Supervising Producer of the highly successful PBS series MAKERS and Finding Your Roots. Prior to joining McGee Media, Deb worked at Apograph Productions, with Writer/Director Rob Rapley. Her credits include Coordinating Producer and Line Producer overseeing business and production activities for all of the company’s documentaries, including its most recent films, Poisoner's Handbook,The Abolitionists, Triangle Fire and The Greely Expedition. Deb spent the early part of her career working with documentary filmmaker Roger Weisberg at Public Policy Productions, collaborating on numerous social issue documentaries, including the Academy Award nominated films, Sound And Fury and Why Can't We Be a Family Again? She lives with her husband and twin daughters in New Jersey.

Executive in Charge of Production — Robert Yacyshyn loves to make television and tell stories. A graduate of Penn State University, Rob started his career at MTV working on such hit projects as TRL: Total Request Live, the VMA’s and Run’s House. Some of his proudest work at MTV was on MADE, for which he worked on eight seasons winning three Daytime Emmy Awards in the process. In 2010, he earned his MBA from Columbia University and began to moonlight at One Louder Productions as the resident Line Producer. He grew into the Executive in Charge of Production (EIC) for One Louder, managing all logistical, financial and legal details for the company. In 2014, One Louder formed a partnership with Follow Productions and Rob signed on to serve as EIC of both entities. Rob enjoyed working on food & lifestyle programming but when McGee Media offered a return to longer form storytelling Rob had no choice but to accept. Rob couldn’t be happier and is excited to see what the future holds at McGee.

Producer — Sara Wolitzky is a documentary filmmaker who has spent over a decade as a creative and operational force behind thoughtful non-fiction programming. With McGee Media, she has been a key contributor to the documentary series MAKERS, which chronicles the U.S. and global women’s movement and the stories of hundreds of female trailblazers. She produced the feature-length MAKERS: Once and For All (Amazon/AOL), and the television hour MAKERS: Women in Space (PBS). She served as a co-producer for the three-hour documentary MAKERS: Women Who Make America (PBS) and as a founding producer for the award-winning digital platform, MAKERS.com, an Oath brand. She began her career at the startup television network Plum TV, where she produced and edited dozens of hours of unscripted programming on the arts, business, politics, food, and ideas and supervised branded content integration for Fortune 500 clients. She can be found with multiple hard drives on her at any given time.

Director and Producer — Ventura started his career at the Foundation at Creative Artists Agency (CAA), Los Angeles, and made the leap to documentary film in 2014 when he joined McGee Media. Since then, he has produced over ten MAKERS profiles, live segments for the MAKERS Conference, videos for social campaigns like Times Up, and more. Most recently, Ventura produced and directed a six-part documentary series, as well as a short documentary film for high-profile clients. He is currently working on a fifty-part web series in partnership with Henry Louis Gates Jr. premiering later this year. Ventura lives in New York City with his partner James Duguay.

Finance Manager — Jennifer Weigel graduated from Brown University with a degree in History in 1986 and obtained her MBA from New York University's Stern School of Business in 2004. She was a Vice President in Citibank's International Private Banking division, supporting Private Bank clients in Europe and Latin America. After leaving Citibank to live for several years in Alaska and Oregon, Jennifer opened her own bookkeeping and accounting practice back on the East Coast, with small business clients in municipal and not-for-profit enterprises, sole proprietors and retail and real estate businesses. She has been responsible for McGee Media's financial transactions and payroll full-time since 2016.

Christine Allen is thrilled to be a member of the McGee Media team. Since 2015, she has worked on a variety of projects for the company in the production management department including most recently the upcoming documentary tentatively titled “Reconstruction and the Birth of Jim Crow". Prior to joining McGee Media, she worked on a variety of shows that aired on VH1, MTV2 and Travel Channel.

Senior Producer & Show Runner — Julia Marchesi is the series producer on Reconstruction, a four-part series on the post-Civil War period that will broadcast in early 2019. A film and television producer for over ten years, Julia has worked on a variety of projects for PBS that explore race, ethnicity, and immigration in America -- including Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and The Italian Americans. Recent projects have focused on the intersection between culture, the arts and American history. She directed two episodes of the GRAMMY-nominated 2016 PBS series Soundbreaking, which tracked the evolution of the art of music recording. In 2017 she was the senior producer on Soundtracks, an eight-part CNN series on the popular music tied to pivotal events in American history.

Producer — Rob Rapley is a writer, director, and producer of historical documentaries. These include, most recently, the final episode of The Great War, which was nominated for Writers’ Guild award, and The Mystery of Tuxedo Park,. His four previous films — Murder of a President,The Poisoner’s Handbook, The Abolitionists and Wyatt Earp — received two Emmy nominations, a Writers’ Guild award and a second nomination, a Western Heritage award, and a Western Writers of America award. A classically-trained musician, Rapley has also engineered Grammy-winning recordings with some of the great classical musicians of our time, and was nominated for an Emmy Award for Bobby McFerrin’s “Loosely Mozart.”

Producer — Cyndee Readdean is an award-winning New York-based producer, director and writer. She unearths the most surprising content and weaves engaging stories that compel viewers to confront the complexity of our world. Her films, many of which have aired on PBS and web-based platforms, explore environmental, health, political issues and civil rights history.

Readdean’s notable films include Freedom Summer, a Peabody Award-winning documentary, and Tell Them We Are Rising: The Story of Black Colleges and Universities, which she produced with director Stanley Nelson. Both films premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Her other films include PBS’ Native American Boomtown, Politics of the New South and No-Obama Drama. In 2016, she produced 15 permanent exhibit films for the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Producer — Stacey L. Holman’s work expands across two continents. From the United States to South Africa, this Harlem-based filmmaker has directed/produced award-winning shorts (Mirar Mirror, Girl Talk), content for cable TV (Red Heeled) and critically acclaimed documentaries (Mary Lou Williams: The Lady Who Swings the Band, Freedom Riders, Jesse Owens). Her most recent work as producer, Tell Them We Are Rising the Story of Black Colleges and Universities, aired on PBS’ Independent Lens in February 2018. Stacey recently finished the short-documentary Dressed Like Kings, which she produced and directed. Currently, she’s teaching a new generation of storytellers at City College of New York.

Post-Production Supervisor — Veronica started her career in television at the Montel Williams Showwhere she tried her hand at production, until finding her passion in post-production. She moved on to become post-coordinator on Sundance Channel’s The Al Franken Show, and has since set on a course to work in as many different genre as possible, from Reality TV and Live to Tape events to Corporate Videos, finally moving into Documentary series. Leib has worked with different networks like Nick@Nite, Oxygen Networks, TLC, Scripps, truTV, InDemand, Lifetime, History Channel, Discovery Science, Nickelodeon, and is currently working with PBS. This has allowed Leib to keep her experience current in this ever-changing media-savvy world. As a working mom, Leib finds balance in post-production by selecting projects that will keep things exciting, fresh and challenging each and every time.

“To me post production is like a puzzle, figuring out where all the pieces go together after the cameras are shut is the best part of my job.”

Ines is an associate producer on McGee Media's upcoming series Reconstruction. She comes to McGee Media after working as an archival researcher on award-winning series O.J.: Made in America (ESPN), which won the 2017 Academy Award for best documentary feature, and Long Strange Trip (Amazon) about the Grateful Dead. If she isn't at work, there's a good chance she's on the volleyball court, exploring New York's cheap eats with friends, or jamming with one of her fake bands.

Originally from Atlanta and a graduate of The University of the South: Sewanee, Judson moved to New York in 2014 to work on a 20-hour sports history series for ESPN. He recently joined McGee Media on “Reconstruction and the Birth of Jim Crow,” and is loving his new team and project. Outside of work Judson is usually playing pickup basketball wherever he can find a game.

Willy graduated from Wesleyan University in 2016 and moved to New York City soon after, where he worked at Motto Pictures and RadicalMedia. He joined McGee Media in January to work on “Reconstruction and the Birth of Jim Crow,” as a production assistant. Originally from Tucson, Arizona, Willy spends his free time going to the movies and learning to appreciate snow.

Alexis Williams is a 2017 graduate of New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. After graduation she worked on a late night show pilot and interned at A24. She joined McGee Media in December to work on Reconstruction and the Birth of Jim Crow.

Reena hails from the small village of Agat, Guam and moved to the mainland US in 2011. She has assisted on shows for CNN, Lifetime, MSNBC and Discovery ID. She joined McGee Media in February 2018 and is the lead assistant editor on "Reconstruction and the Birth of Jim Crow" for PBS. You can often find her with a furrowed brow trying to 'fix it in post'.

Samantha is excited to be a part of McGee’s Reconstruction series as an Assistant Editor. An Emerson College 2017 graduate, with a degree in Post Production, Samantha’s credits include Bravo, Discovery ID, PBS and MSNBC. She is currently working on a documentary of her grandfather’s Holocaust survival story.